The Marks of Man

We are all tired, we have had 30 people over, in steams in the last two days. I realise now how important it is to have clean water and power, easy to forget. Collecting water, having showers, tea and conversations. It is quite hard getting sleep when the house moves every so often. We are back to the one room mode, funny, much to every ones amusement I get to be under the big wooden beam, we haven't decided if that is a good idea or not, so we are all moving to the outer walls, were the house is single story. So keeping up the "normal behavior", cutting grass, collecting eggs and cleaning up slowly. Strange the audio book I am listening to is "lucifers Hammer", a disaster novel, about a comet strike in 1970's California, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. We have some very homeless people turning up to use the cottage. I had an email from Batches and Holiday homes, the company that used to advertise our holiday home in Hanmer, to renew our booking fees. So

very frightening, when cars are sinking in liquefaction. Annie was almost trapped in her work building bleeding people and falling walls and glass. I was just angry, spent the last two days getting into survival mode, we have a generator, lots of tinned food, a gas shower. The chickens were huddled in a corner and the dogs were rattled. Drove a very fast around the holes to get the kids, found them at school comforting other kids. Annie took hours to get home, driving around holes and wrecked buildings, and people sitting by the side of the road getting treatments. We have an artisan well so lots of water. I am eying the cows in the our field and thinking about fresh steak We have a refugee family staying in our cottage, and more coming in the next few days. Thank god we got this farm. Thanks for the thoughts we really appreciate it and feel very lucky to be alive.

GUM BICHROMATE PRINTS Historically, the gumprint is an offshoot of the old style of carbon printing. Gumprinting has survived among both technicians and artists because of the variety of possibilities in the technique and quality of the obtainable image ranging from very fine color separation to a controlled Sumi or loose painterly application. The comparative inexpensiveness of the materials, the ease in applying the colors of your choice, both generally and locally; and the ability to work into the surface of the image with other media have maintained the gum prints popularity, although it is a far more difficult process than Blue or Van Dyke printing. Materials: Any paper which will stand repeated soakings in water and has a slight tooth; coarser papers result in more break-up of the image and also tend to trap unexposed emulsion (a good grade watercolor or rag fiber etching paper - e.g., Reeves, D'Arches, Strathmore - works well). Negatives : As this is generally a co